What’s implied in the hip design store Mod Livin’s name has taken benevolent shape in Happiness Is a Mod Puppy, a unique benefit auction for the Downtown Animal Care Foundation. Featuring a pack of Eero Aarnio plastic puppies decorated by local artists and businesses — including Westword style blogger the…

As Miss Talulah proprietor Robin Lohre sadly puts it, it’s time to open your purse and pick up a “little piece of Talulah history.” The girly store, which once upon a time moved from the Ballpark neighborhood to pioneer a space in Stapleton’s Town Center, 7477 East 29th Place, is…

Seamstress Jil Cappuccio is a fabric person. An avid thrift-shopper with a collector’s eye, she’s developed an irrepressible love affair with vintage cloth and prints — a yard here, a length there — that she magically transforms into reasonably priced, absolutely one-of-a-kind togs that are comfortably designed to fit like…

Boulder’s weekly downtown farmers’ market has a reputation for being one of the region’s best, but today (and on one select Saturday monthly, continuing though October) it turns into a bona fide street festival. Along with the market’s fresh produce, flowers and prepared foods, there’s Restaurant Fresh Connections food sampling…

The worst thing anyone can ever say about Aurora’s annual KidSpree outdoor festival for children is that it’s hot out there — but if you bring plenty of water and sunscreen, you should be fine. Offering more than sixty activities for all ages on a generous spread in Bicentennial Park…

“Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands!” One can only imagine what response Peter Pan’s famous lines will evoke when they’re uttered on screen under the stars of Cheesman Park during tonight’s city-sponsored Movies in the Parks screening of the fanciful…

Gravel-voiced street musician turned stage artist Jason Webley oozes a Tom Waits vibe, but don’t tell him that. The busking accordionist is clearly his own creation, known for leading Andy Kaufman-style audience-participation parades (one Webley-led public takeover of a Seattle water fountain got him banned from Bumbershoot), using a coin-filled…

The 2007 Sierra Mist Major League Soccer All-Star Game, taking place tonight at 7 p.m. at the splendid Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, was supposed to trumpet the arrival of Sir David of Beckham to America. Though this rumor was never confirmed, it was widely reported, and many assumed it to…

Paul and Pifuka Hardt of RiNo’s so-hip P Design Gallery are in a tizzy. She’s pregnant, they’re in the process of expanding their showroom, and they’re preparing for a new show that’s near and dear to their hearts: an all-Colorado home-furnishings design fest showcasing about ten or so companies —…

Though already in step with the fast-rising local-food movement, Whole Foods Markets is taking its commitment to regional growers and food producers even more seriously this summer by hosting the Farmers and Food Artisans 2007 Road Tour, a moving feast of a farmers’ market that includes some of the best…

Whether you make folk art or simply admire it, the inaugural San Luis Valley Folk Arts and Fiber Festival has something for you: A combined artisan networking event and vendor fair, the weekend fest in Monte Vista (at the junction of U.S. highways 285 and 160, near the Great Sand…

Why do we love First Fridays on Santa Fe Drive? Because they’re really just artsy block parties, blessed with a communal sensibility that comes together monthly in a culture clash of diverse artist enclaves — highbrow, lowbrow, commercial and committed — and swirling humanity. To that end, two of the…

Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when everyone suddenly discovered sushi and Akira Kurosawa, it was hip to be a Japanophile, and I was. And even now, when sushi bars proliferate almost as quickly as Starbucks, I still appreciate not only the unique Japanese sense of grace and…

Most Front Range folks don’t know we have a musician as remarkable as Wu Fei in our midst. The Boulder-based Chinese guzheng virtuoso is equally handy at performing the traditional music she’s worked on since the age of six and the contemporary fusion styles she embraces as a graduate of…

Kim Franco thinks big. Or, as it turns out, bigger than she thought: In the eight months that the former Cabaret Diosa songstress Franco and her Company Ink creative compadres spent shaping their new musical comedy, Ciao Eden!, the two-hour biblical-burlesque romp has taken on a life of its own…

Fans of the Man in Black know that Johnny Cash was just hitting his stride when he died, sitting on top of an illustrious fifty-year career that hadn’t ebbed in spite of health problems and the death of his beloved wife, June Carter. The iconic Cash ethos will always be…

The cult of Kahlo needs no explanation: Frida Kahlo, the artist, is already fascinating for her wholly original work, but when you view her in terms of her historical and social milieu — well, what more is there to say? She was born an icon. The Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray,…

Kids not only love to relive their own stories, but they also have the imaginations to pull it off from scratch, winging it on memory alone. That’s why My Horizon, a new exhibit of landscape works by Downtown Aurora Visual Arts students ages seven to eighteen, promises to take gallery-goers…

Isn’t it funny how adults need a good excuse for going to the zoo? Usually, we take advantage of children — they’re the most reliable pretext — but lots of groups just wait until it’s time for another Do at the Zoo to spy on naked polar bears and swim…

Truth be told, San Francisco’s Summer of Love was a lot less about love and a lot more about community giving way to a fair amount of drug-driven chaos. But it also galvanized kids across the nation with its pure, daisy-in-your-rifle sort of magnetism, and a whole generation bloomed and…

Mastery of a traditional instrument beyond all expectations isn’t a new concept; Béla Fleck’s been shredding up the banjo for years, and Chris Thile reaches for mandolin stratosphere every chance he gets. But the ukulele? Hawaiian whiz kid Jake Shimabukuro — who’s been called “the new Jimi Hendrix” — proves…

What true bookie wouldn’t love to mingle with a who’s-who of contemporary Indian literature, beginning, but not ending with, the esteemed Salman Rushdie, all while sitting on the top of the world in Aspen? That’s the agenda at this year’s Aspen Summer Words festival, titled Passage to India: a five-day…